Die-In at University of Chicago

December 5, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

Special to revcom.us/Revolution

December 4—An outpouring of anger at University of Chicago broke through the intellectual “cool” that usually prevails at this elite university. At noon a crowd of about 150 jammed the entrance to Regenstein Library, chanting and creating a corridor where about 50 people held a die-in. After a 4-1/2 minute silence symbolizing the 4-1/2 hours that Michael Brown lay in the street, the die-in continued while the crowd—mostly students but also people from the Hyde Park neighborhood of Obama—sang protest songs and waved signs: “Black Lives Matter,” “I Can’t Breathe,” and “I Didn’t Sign This Social Contract.” After the die-in, marchers took over a busy intersection near campus, and stopped traffic. Through the action, we got out copies of Revolution and talked to several students.

Special to revcom.us/Revolution

Deep conversations went on along with chanting and singing: one young African-American woman student asked some of the white students, “Tell me, how do you respond when people say ‘Well, he must have done something wrong for them to murder him’?” A chorus of voices rose in criticism about that "way of thinking"—how can that even be the question, when repeated reality has shown that police murder young people of color and no cop is ever indicted. The young woman said that she had known young boys and girls who were harassed by the cops; she’d known grown men and women too, and this pattern had to be broken. We went into how this is a system, and she responded how disgusted she was with Obama; people put their faith in him but he has done just what other presidents have done: justifying oppression and wars. She said that even Obama’s new immigration “reform” was just to bring immigrants into their system so they could be followed and deported.

Then we took over the intersection, and students we talked to all knew about and many planned to attend the 5 pm protest at State and Jackson in the Loop.